The invention concerns a filter pipeline, in particular for the air intake system of an internal combustion engine, comprising a tubular body in which at least one filter element is received.
Filter pipelines are utilized in the air intake system of internal combustion engines in order to guide the taken-in ambient air through a filter element and in order to supply in this way filtered combustion air to the engine. In known filter pipelines at least two tubular bodies are provided between which a filter housing for receiving a filter element is arranged. By means of the tubular body for the raw air the ambient air is supplied to the filter housing and, after passing the filter element, the ambient air is supplied to the engine by means of the tubular body for the purified air. In this connection, filter mats or similar block-shaped filter elements are conventionally used and inserted into an appropriately designed filter housing. When in certain applications an increased filter efficiency is required, it is necessary to employ filter mats of correspondingly enlarged dimensions so that the size of the filter housing and thus of the entire filter pipeline is significantly increased. In the usual applications of filter pipelines in a motor vehicle, in lawn mowers or even in compressors, there is however only a very limited space available so that providing the required filter efficiency is often difficult or even excluded. Moreover, the manufacture of filter pipelines with increased filter area is complex and cost-intensive because expensive filter elements such as round filter elements or compact filter elements must be used.
It is an object of the present invention to design a filter pipeline in such a way that a filter area as large as possible in relation to the size of the filter pipeline is made available with a cost-effective manufacture of the filter pipeline.